


Strange Water

by Anoke



Series: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Agender Character, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Death, Found Family, Gen, Genocide, Gezras' Specific Trauma Backstory, Mages Are Terrible (The Witcher), Misgendering, Nepronouns, Past Child Abuse, Revenge, Standard Witcher Trauma Backstory, Violence, Witcher Biology (The Witcher), discussion of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29656641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anoke/pseuds/Anoke
Summary: Gezras wakes up near the bottom of a pile of corpses. One can only go up from here, right?Or, Gezras of Leyda's journey of vengeance, from corpse pile to the sacking of Stygga Castle; with some unexpected family and acceptance along the way.
Series: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179314
Comments: 37
Kudos: 14





	1. Everybody Wants to Be a Cat

**Author's Note:**

> You know when I said I was holding off on writing a prequel? yyyyeah.
> 
> Your reminder:
> 
> Gezras is a half-elven kid who was sold to Stygga Castle by dear old dad, was experimented on by the mages there, woke up under a pile of corpses, rescued the remaining living kids from that round of experimentation (who the mages were going to kill and dissect/vivisect), joined up with a group of Aen Seidhe guerrillas, spent several years with them, returned to Stygga Castle around when it was sacked by soldiers of Ebbing to kill all the mages in their sleep, and took the remaining Cats north and founded the Dyn Marv caravan, eventually becoming Grandmaster of the the School of the Cats. 
> 
> This fic is going to cover corpse pile to sacking.
> 
> I headcanon Gezras as being agender, and I decided to kitbash some Elder Speech to come up with a set of pronouns. In my universe, these are just slightly archaic Elder singular gender-neutral pronouns:
> 
> ae (used like he/she/they, singular, so it's “ae is” not “ae are”)  
> aer (him/his/her/them)  
> aers (his/hers/theirs)  
> aerséy (himself/herself/themselves)
> 
>  **WARNING:** The narrative of this story is such that Gezras does not yet realize that ae's agender as of the first several chapters, and ae doesn't actually know enough Elder to be aware of the pronouns ae will eventually be using. As such, the first several chapters will be using he/him pronouns, including while in Gezras' point of view. Just wanted to make sure everybody is aware.
> 
> Check the end notes for some additional warnings.
> 
> Title is from Dune by Frank Herbert — 'Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.'

Waking was agony. Gezras felt like he had been torn to pieces and only partially stitched back together. Every nerve was screaming in pain, and he couldn’t— he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move, and something was pinning him down, he couldn’t move and he couldn’t breathe in and when he forced his eyes open everything was dark— _Could_ he see? Was he blind? He couldn’t see and he couldn’t _move_ — He thrashed, and felt something give slightly underneath him before his vision went red, then white, then black.

Waking was agony. Gezras felt like he had been torn to pieces and only partially stitched back together. He was lying pinned, something pressing him down, into— he didn’t know what he was lying on. He had laid down on the table, and there had been straps— this wasn’t the table. He took a deep, shuddering breath and almost gagged. Blood. He could smell blood, and vomit, and shit, and something almost sweet but sickly at the same time, and this wasn’t the table in the lab, and the smells were so close— Gezras opened his eyes. There was light coming from behind his head. He could see a little. He wished he couldn’t, because that was a hand, in his face, and it wasn’t warm like a hand should be warm, and the mages wouldn’t have stacked living children like this, and that meant he was _in the corpse pile_ — Gezras tried to scream but all that came out of his throat was a croak, tried to shove the other body off of him but all his muscles screamed at him instead and everything went dark.

Waking was agony. Gezras remembered where he was this time. He still hurt like he’d been pulled apart and poorly stitched back together. But _he wasn’t going to die here_. He _wasn’t._

If he was going to get out of this alive, he couldn’t thrash like before. He couldn’t panic. He knew where he’d seen light coming from. If he could just move enough—

He wasn’t about to open his eyes, either.

Shifting _hurt,_ and he couldn’t help shivering in horror as the bodies he was buried under shifted too. Something gave under him, slightly, and he knew he was lying on _more_ bodies, and was Celso lying here to rot? Was Dtane? Gezras couldn’t think about it. He _couldn’t._ He shifted more, and felt skin trailing against his. Some of it was sticky. His eyes stung like mad, but no tears fell. Was that a mutant thing? Not being able to cry?

Gezras got his arms over his head and put them down against— oh _fuck_ that was somebody’s head, he could feel _hair_ , _**his finger had slipped into an eye socket**_ _**fuck fuck fuck fuck—**_

Gezras blanked out a little and pulled himself forward, arms and mind screaming— _he could feel the hair against his chest now, he was crawling on top of someone else’s corpse, they’d all been killed and thrown on the rubbish pile to rot, just like dad had said had happened to his mother_ —and pulled himself forward again, and again.

It took _forever_ to get his arms free of the pile. When he reached and felt stone instead of another body he had to stop and breathe for a minute, making little hitching sobs. He was almost free. Almost free, but his arms were on fire and he was trembling like a leaf. Two more pulls brought his head and torso free, and then he squirmed and wriggled until he was curled in a ball on the chilly flagstones, sobbing tearlessly and soundlessly into his burning arms.

Eventually he was too exhausted to even do that, and laid there breathing for a little while. It was night, that much was clear, but it wasn’t dark, not to him. He could see the horrible, half-melted looking bodies in the massive pile he’d just crawled out of. Gezras closed his eyes, not wanting to look any more, and shuddered as a sudden memory struck him— feeling like his eyes were going to burst, and a horrible stabbing pain— _**no**_. No. He wasn’t going to think about that.

Gezras still hurt _so much._ He just wanted to lie there like a corpse himself. Would someone find him in the morning? Would he still be alive then? 

…did he _want_ someone to find him in the morning?

Everyone had seen it happen. The mages taking someone off for an “examination”. The unlucky soul never coming back. None of the adult Witchers had ever _done_ anything about it, just looked solemn and bleak. And this time— the mages had taken all of them. All of the children. The little ones just barely toddling, the ones only just learning to hold a sword, like Celso— and the ones who were about to be mutated anyway, like Gezras and Dtane. If the mages found out he was alive, would they leave him alone? Or would they take him and tear him all to pieces again to find out what made him different?

He knew which one it would be.

He couldn’t stay here. Not on the flagstones, not at Stygga Castle. He had to get out.

Hauling himself to his feet was as hard as dragging himself free of the pile of bodies had been. He couldn’t stop trembling, and he _hurt_ , hurt like he had when he’d had broken bones, and he couldn’t bend his arms or legs properly, and he felt like he was going to fall over any minute. But he was upright. Upright was important. 

Walking was even more tenuous, but Gezras managed a few steps. Of course, the problem remained of where he was going to _go_. He didn’t think he could walk down the long mountain trail completely naked on a good day, and this was— not. But he couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —stay.

Gezras was trying not to start crying again when it hit him: not too long ago, he’d climbed up the side of one of the towers, partly to prove that it wasn’t only the mutated kids who could and partially because he had just—needed some time alone. He’d been sitting in a window niche, pressed against the closed shutters, and had heard two of the mages talking. He hadn’t understood most of what they were saying, but one of them had said something about a preset portal, and how it saved on— something, for being able to transport goods, and why couldn’t they have one up in the tower so they didn’t have to haul everything up the steps (apparently it would mess with some of the magic or something). Gezras had thought it sounded interesting, but since it was undoubtedly in the mage’s space, where he didn’t dare go, he had put it mostly out of mind. But _now_ — well, given what would happen to him if the mages found him _anyway_ , he had no reason not to try.

Decision made, Gezras turned and slowly staggered towards the door into the keep.

* * *

The stone hallways were eerily quiet. Gezras knew that the Witchers and trainees slept as far away from the wing that housed the mages as they could, but the unlit hallways and the only things he could hear being the slight sound of his feet on the floor and his own ragged breathing was— unnerving. There had always been others around before.

…was he the only one left? There had been so many bodies in the pile. Had the mages killed everyone _but_ him?

Gezras tripped at that thought but caught himself on the wall at the last second. He stood there for a moment, vision fuzzing and grimly trying not to collapse. If he fell over he wasn’t sure he could get up again.

The fuzziness eventually passed from his vision, if not his brain, and he started forward again. He had no idea how he managed the stairs, apart from a grim certainty that they would never end that was, eventually, proved wrong. He was standing at the bottom, trying to figure out where to go next, when he realized he heard something— someone crying.

Gezras couldn’t imagine one of the mages ever crying. He started towards the sound.

He paused in the doorway of the room it was coming from and wheezed in surprise to see three kids strapped to tables. He hadn’t been expecting— He’d thought, from the rotting smell, that it had been a few days. They usually moved the survivors to the infirmary after a day. If they were still here—

A chill ran down his spine, and he staggered over to the closest table as quickly as he could move. Gezras recognized the boy on it— Conell was his name, he wasn’t a close friend but Gezras knew him.

Conell yelped slightly, which interrupted the crying from one of the others. Gezras opened his mouth to say something, but only managed a croak. Shit.

Conell squinted at him, then whispered “ _Gezras?_ ”

Gezras nodded, and tore at the restraining straps with his clumsy fingers. If he could just get one of Conell’s hands unbound— It took much longer than it should have, but Gezras managed to undo the buckle on the restraint and Conell pulled his hand free. Gezras slid to the floor, too exhausted to stop himself, and sat there feeling like someone had stuffed his head with fluff until someone grabbed his shoulder and he jerked away.

“Gezras, here,” he heard through the ringing in his ears, and something was pressed to his mouth. 

_Water_ , Gezras realized as some of it lapped against his lips, stinging as it did. He took a sip, and realized that it wasn’t just water, it had had a ton of salt poured into it, like the Masters had told them to have after they'd been training all day, and it might have been the best thing he’d ever tasted. He tried to gulp and choked, and had to cough for a minute before trying again. He went slower that time, and managed to drink quite a bit. His vision cleared slightly, and as Conell lowered the bucket Gezras noticed the other two standing behind him— Lev, who Gezras didn’t know even as well as Conell, and Celso, tear tracks shining stark on his face and contrasting strangely with his new yellow eyes. 

Gezras’ guts twisted. That was all? Three out of the thirty-something the mages had gathered up?

“They want to kill us,” Lev said in a whisper. “They said such a huge failure— they had to see what we had in common.”

Gezras felt a sudden stab of rage. It wasn’t enough for the mages to have _murdered_ more than thirty children— they had to make sure there were no survivors? It was _obscene._ It was— it was _evil_. He’d wanted to get away from them before, but— that wasn’t good enough. He wanted the mages to **die**.

“Gezras,” Celso whimpered, and Gezras’ gaze snapped to him. “How are we gonna get _out?_ ”

Gezras licked his lips and croaked, “Portal.”

“What?” Lev said, looking completely baffled. “Who the hell would make us a _portal?_ ”

“Permanent,” Gezras rasped, then reached, hand trembling, for the bucket again. Conell lifted it and Gezras took another couple long draughts.

“‘S one, doesn’t need mage,” Gezras continued. “Here.”

“You’re sure?” Conell whispered, hope terrible in his new eyes.

Gezras nodded. He _had_ to be sure. They didn’t have any other options.

“Lev, Celso, you two need to look for this portal thing,” Conell said. “Do you know what it looks like?” he added to Gezras, who regretfully shook his head. “Well, look around. Maybe in a clear area?”

“Knives,” Gezras croaked.

“What?” Lev asked.

“Defense,” Gezras tried to clarify.

“Good idea,” Conell said, and added “If there’s anything we could use as a weapon, maybe grab it. We don’t know what might—”

Celso and Lev nodded, looking grim.

Conell stayed nearby and helped Gezras drink a little more, then limped away for a minute and came back dressed and carrying a small stack of clothes and a pair of shoes. Gezras looked at him and knew that the clothes were from the other dead children, and he had to turn his head and try not to vomit at the thought of their naked bodies piled like trash just outside.

“You’re kinda,” Conell said, and waved a hand at him.

Gezras had been trying to ignore the gore caked onto him, but he was suddenly aware of being _sticky_. He took the clothes that Conell had wet from—ah, a water barrel—and started trying to scrub himself, hissing as every movement sent sparks of pain skittering through him. Conell joined in after a second, and although that set Gezras’ skin crawling even worse, he let Conell do it. They didn’t have enough time for him to be picky.

Gezras stopped when he had gotten his arms clean, staring at the chalky white skin, completely free of any mark.

“Gezras?” Conell asked, peering over his shoulder, and cursed.

Gezras was still staring at his arms like he’d never seen them before. He’d had freckles. He was _supposed_ to have freckles. He’d been covered in them, crowding his skin like the stars crowded the sky. And they were gone. Had his skin been so pale between the freckles before? He wasn’t sure if it had. He looked… _dead._

“We gotta get you cleaner,” Conell said, and Gezras nearly slugged him. Instead he started scrubbing at his face, then his chest and legs. He didn’t look at himself anymore. His skin wasn’t _his_.

“We found it,” Celso said from the doorway as Conell was helping Gezras tie on his shoes.

Gezras took another long drink and doggedly got to his feet again. It was a little bit easier and a lot harder at the same time, to be upright again, and he had to stand there trembling before he could start forward. Conell offered an arm, but Gezras didn’t take it. He could see how shaky Conell was, and knocking him over wouldn’t help.

Celso said, “And we found some knives,” and handed Gezras a couple of— scalpels. Those were scalpels. Gezras had to fight the urge to throw them against the nearest wall, but eventually won. A weapon was a weapon.

Lev was in one of the other rooms, leaning against a wall near a large stone arch. There was a little table with a weird decorated skull on it next to the arch.

“I didn’t touch anything yet,” Lev said. “Do you know how to start it?”

Gezras shook his head slowly. It was supposed to be something you could activate without any magic, though, and the skull was the only other thing of interest in the room. Gezras reached out and brushed a hand against the skull, and a portal roared into existence in the arch. He gestured to it, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch in what might have been a smile.

“Gotta be better than here,” Conell said, with an attempted smile of his own, and took Celso’s hand to lead him through.

Gezras waited for Lev to follow Conell, then stared at the roaring eye himself. Did he hear a shout from far away? A sudden wave of rage rose in him. Maybe that was one of the mages. Concerned that maybe their _experiments_ were escaping.

Could he kill a mage? He’d never killed anyone before, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t been training for it. He could break the skull, so that the mages couldn’t follow the others immediately, and he had scalpels—

Gezras shook his head, ignoring the way his vision was getting a little fuzzy again. He hurt too much, and the mages, well, _had magic._ Even if he could kill one of them, there were five of them here. And Gezras didn’t want just one of them dead. He wanted to make sure every last one of them was dead.

“I’ll be back later,” he forced out. It hurt, but a vow needed to be spoken aloud. Gezras stepped through the portal, not looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up front: Warning for _so much child death_ in this chapter. Gezras canonically crawled out of a pile of corpses of other children from an experimental mutation done by the mages of Stygga, and that's how this opens, in detail.
> 
> Additional mention of the mages planning to vivisect or murder and dissect the survivors of the latest mutagen experimentation
> 
> Eye horror mention, twice above the first line break, once in the line with all the bold text, right after "Was that a mutant thing? Not being able to cry?" and once in the paragraph starting with "Eventually he was too exhausted to even do that, and laid there breathing for a little while."


	2. Murderchirp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. I was going to post this yesterday, but events conspired so that I was too damn tired to. Please check the end notes for some warnings, and I hope you enjoy! (The whump train will stop... next chapter. I think. Ideally.)
> 
> Another bunch of thanks for all the people in my discord server who helped me edit and brainstorm for this, especially deerna and sonnet, who went over the whole thing for edits.

Gezras had never been through a portal before. The sensation was _weird,_ like stepping through a curtain but jumping down from a wall at the same time, and it made his stomach lurch and set off another round of pain screaming across his body. Celso, Conell, and Lev had made it safely through the portal too, and were huddled in a little group against a railing. Gezras looked around, trying not to move his head quickly. The portal had spat them out on top of some ruins made of carved white stone, half-overgrown with vines and grass, and though the roar of the portal drowned out every other noise, Gezras couldn’t see or— _smell,_ that was a new one, anyone or anything but the other three.

“Gezras?” Celso asked. “You okay?”

Gezras nodded a little, then turned to look at the still-open portal. He was going to have to fix that, somehow. He gave the ground near him another look and noticed a small pile of rubble, with several chunks of rock about the right size for him to throw. Picking one up without falling on his face or dropping any of the scalpels was harder than he thought, but he managed.

 _The skull had been almost chest-level—_ Gezras threw the rock, trying to aim despite the pain in his arm.

After a moment, the portal winked out, and Gezras rather gratefully sat down and closed his eyes. With the roar of the portal gone, the rustle of plants and sounds of insects chirping filtered into the air. He didn’t hear anything larger moving, though; maybe everything had fled when the portal had opened.

“What are we gonna do?” Lev asked worriedly.

“Can’t stay,” Gezras grated. This would probably be the first place that the mages would look, once they noticed the skull had been disturbed.

"Which way do we go?" Conell said.

There was quiet for a moment, and Gezras turned his head and saw that the others were looking right at him.

 _Why **me?**_ he couldn't help thinking. It wasn't as if he knew anything more about where they'd wound up than they did.

“Road,” he eventually croaked. Putting distance between themselves and where the portal came out was important, and none of them were in the shape to be trekking through the woods. He wasn’t sure what would happen to them if they came across a village or a town, but monsters definitely wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.

Gezras carefully didn’t think about how much easier it was to see the others’ scared faces by the light of the moon than it had been— however many days ago, before the mages had collected them. He and Dtane had been lying together in bed, unable to sleep, and the silvery light had poured in through the open window, and they’d whispered their fears to each other— Gezras had to break off the train of thought, his eyes burning.

Much to his displeasure, Gezras had to lean heavily on Conell to get moving again. He hadn’t wanted to hinder the other boy _more_ , but he couldn’t even stand up anymore. He felt— weird. Twitchy and nervous and almost feverish. He still hurt all over, but this wasn’t the same. There wasn’t anything they could do about it for now, though, so he focused on the warmth of Conell’s body at his side instead of the smothering press of the other boy's arm and tried not to stumble over rocks in the road. 

Progress was _painfully_ slow, and Gezras couldn’t help a growing feeling of frustration, mostly with himself, over their crawling pace. Every time something big moved in the underbrush, they all stopped for a moment, expecting a monster or aggressive animal or the mages and the oldest Cats, come to drag them back to the labs—but nothing ever happened. Gezras wanted to scream after the third pointless halt. At least if something did jump out at them he wouldn’t be stuck _waiting._

When they started slowing down _again_ , Gezras snarled. “Keep _going!_ ”

“Gezras?” Celso asked, looking back at him.

Gezras growled and half-threw himself forwards, so that Conell had to take another step or fall over. They had to keep moving. It was _important_ , in a way that Gezras couldn’t explain.

“Okay,” Conell said in his ear. “Okay.”

Gezras could feel a knot of shame forming in his chest, but they couldn’t stop moving now. _He_ couldn’t stop moving now.

Gezras was too frustrated and in too much pain to keep track of how much time had passed, but it felt like they had been limping along for hours and gone nowhere. The trees looked the same, the road looked the same, they’d been hearing the same damn noises— but suddenly a series of rustles that had long since faded into the background suddenly got much louder and someone called out, “Don’t move!”

Gezras’ vision went red around the edges, and he tightened his grip on the scalpels as they all froze. _No._ They _couldn’t_ be caught now. Not after how far they’d gotten. He wouldn’t let that happen.

“Who’s there?” Conell called, voice a little high.

“Dana Méadbh, _holl_ weddyn?” Gezras heard from off to the side. He didn’t understand the words, but the speaker sounded disbelieving. The unfamiliar language might mean that this wasn’t the Cats, but he knew—intimately—how willing people were to sell children to Stygga. 'People' just meant 'danger'.

Celso burst into tears, and Gezras’ stomach twisted at the sound. The youngest boy just sounded defeated. That wasn’t right. The sound was _wrong_.

“We won’t go back,” Lev said, pulling Celso into his side and looking round at the wood. His voice was shaky. “We _won’t._ ”

Gezras backed him with a snarl from his torn throat. _Nobody_ was going to take them back.

“Er _llygad_ ,” came a whisper from the woods. 

Gezras snapped his head towards the sound, furiously trying to catch a hint of movement or a glint of metal or flash of skin in the moonlight. Nothing. He ground his teeth together.

“Hear you,” Gezras growled, in hopes of startling one of the lurkers into giving themselves away.

“Essear vatt’ghern weddyn,” came yet another voice, this one noticeably deep and quite a bit louder than the others. 

How many people _were_ there? How long had the strangers been toying with them? Gezras shoved off of Conell and strode forward, trying to find at least one of their attackers. He hadn’t thought he was able to stand on his own earlier, but now, with anger boiling inside him and red sparks floating in his vision, he found he barely hurt at all.

“Deithwedd, esseae _aen seidhe,_ ” came from above. 

Gezras looked up and caught a hint of movement in the branches of a tree. He bared his teeth at the shape. _I **see** you._

There was a soft thump from behind him, and he spun halfway around to see someone with a weapon less than a bodylength from Lev and Celso, close, too close, _much_ too close and he hadn’t pulled himself free of the corpses of all the others and staggered this far away to be dragged back to hell and he wouldn’t let them take the others they were _his_ and the red sparks multiplied in his eyes and his veins and he was incandescent, white-hot and mindless and _burning._ A shriek of rage built in his chest and tore its way out of his ruined throat, and Gezras threw himself at the enemy with scalpels ready to slice them to ribbons.

* * *

Ytanwe had his bow at full draw, ready to loose an arrow in case this was a trap, the children its lure. He was not expecting the child Witcher—the _elven_ child Witcher—to give an unearthly shriek and hurl themselves at Isilion. The child had been leaning so heavily on one of the others moments earlier that Ytanwe hadn’t thought they could stand unaided, but they rushed Isilion with uncanny speed— before he could adjust, the child had already engaged, small blades flashing in eerily accurate slices. With the two so close together in the darkness, Ytanwe didn’t have anything like a clear shot—not to mention his reluctance to shoot an elven child, Witcher or not.

None of the other children seemed to know what was happening either; they'd flinched back and away from their companion, and what little Ytanwe could make of their faces looked as shocked as Ytanwe felt.

Ealonwe cursed. “Boss, what do we—”

“Ropes," Ytanwe snapped, then called out in Ebrach, “Get clear!”

The children jerked and the three not fighting looked towards his voice, animal eyes flashing green in the scant moonlight. None of them moved, and they all looked like they might edge _towards_ the little redhead— who, Ytanwe could now see, had already drawn blood. Isilion, on the other hand, was making every attempt to disengage, but the frenzied child was pressing him hard enough that he was having trouble.

Ytanwe swore under his breath and stepped out of the underbrush and onto the road. He whistled sharply, hoping to attract the attention of the redhead for a little longer and give Samraiche and Ealonwe a clear target for the rope. The child’s head whipped around and Isilion took his moment to make a break for a tree. He made it up, but the redhead left a nasty-looking score along the back of his leg.

“Gezras,” said the smallest child, and the redhead’s gaze snapped to them and the blond that was holding them.

Ytanwe realized what was going to happen a moment before it did, and only just managed to tackle the redhead before they sliced open either of the other’s throats. The blade found his arm instead, but Ytanwe couldn’t bring himself to regret it. The redhead screamed again, and started thrashing wildly under him, stabbing at him blindly with the blades. One of them broke off partway in his flesh and he swore, but he grimly kept the child pinned, trying to catch their flailing limbs. The Witcher child was far stronger than a normal one would be, but their attacks weren’t nearly as focused as they’d been before— in fact, Ytanwe was pretty sure they were panicking.

“We’ll not hurt them,” Ytanwe heard Ealonwe snap in Ebrach. “But there’s clearly something wrong.”

Ytanwe just focused on trying to keep the redhead from thrashing loose, and almost sighed with relief when Samraiche stepped into view, his hands glowing faintly. The redhead screamed again at the sight and _clawed_ for freedom. Ytanwe could feel their shoulder dislocate and felt sick to his stomach— he didn’t _like_ hurting children.

It took several moments for the child to fall unconscious under Samraiche’s hands, and Ytanwe waited until the healer nodded before he got up off the child and looked down at himself to assess the damage they had managed to inflict. His arms were scattered with small bleeding punctures, but nothing looked to require immediate attention.

“What are you doing to him?” demanded the child the redhead had been leaning on. They were heavyset and curly-haired, with brown skin several shades lighter than Ytanwe’s own.

“Samraiche is going to make sure he stays asleep for a little while,” Ytanwe responded. “He’s a healer, too, so he’s probably seeing if your friend is injured.”

Samraiche, who had already corrected the child’s dislocated arm and had moved onto other medical checks, interjected with a long string of curses and started _pouring_ chaos into the redhead. “Boss, I can barely believe this kid is still _alive_ ,” Samraiche said, drawn. “He’s severely dehydrated, his body’s been eating itself and is on the verge of organ failure, he has massive amounts of unrelated cellular damage— I don’t think he should have been _conscious_ , much less been fighting as well as he was.”

“Do what you can to keep him alive until we can get him back to camp,” Ytanwe said, then looked up at the other Witcher children and switched back to Ebrach. “What happened? Why were you here?”

 _They_ had been here because Samraiche had felt a strong surge of magic near the ruins while they’d been returning from an operation. Ytanwe almost hadn’t believed Isilion when he’d said he’d spotted a group of what looked like children limping down the road, but however unbelievable it had been, it was true. Then, of course, things had gone sideways.

The three children exchanged looks, and the blond repeated, “We won’t go back.”

“To where?” Ealonwe asked.

“Stygga Castle,” said the brown-skinned child. “The mages were planning to kill us. Gezras rescued us, and we escaped.”

Ytanwe heard a little hissed breath from Samraiche, but ignored it for the moment. Human mages being monsters wasn’t exactly a surprise.

“And your names?” Ytanwe asked.

“Conell,” said the child. “That’s Lev and Celso.”

“Well, Conell,” Ytanwe said, trying for a bit of a smile. “None of us have any love for dh’oine—human—mages. You don’t have to stay with us, but we would be willing to offer you some help.”

Conell didn’t soften at the smile, and gave each of Ytanwe’s group a long look before saying, “We’ll go with you.”

It was obvious that Conell didn’t trust them at all, but that was something that would only come with time. Up close, it was obvious that none of the children were in good condition, and Ytanwe made a mental note to have Samraiche check all of them over when they were back at camp. And speaking of—

“We should start moving soon,” Ytanwe said to Conell. “If you, Lev, and Celso are willing, we can carry you.”

“And Gezras?” Celso asked, tremulous but determined.

“We won’t leave Gezras behind,” Ytanwe said, gently. _If nothing else we need to find out if the mages will be coming for our children next._

The children all looked at each other again, and Ytanwe deliberately turned to Isilion rather than stare at them.

“Do you need Samraiche to look at you immediately?” he asked, sticking to Ebrach.

“No, but he should look at you, Boss. I saw some of that knife break off in you,” Isilion answered in the same tongue, tying off a bandage.

That, of course, prompted Samraiche to come over and start examining Ytanwe. He rolled his eyes and grumbled a little, deliberately overexaggerating, but anything that might calm the Witcher children down a little would be helpful. It did actually hurt when Samraiche removed the blade fragment. It turned out to be razor-thin and, Ytanwe realized a moment later, part of a scalpel. He clenched his jaw and did his best not to let his feelings show on his face—the mages had clearly been planning to do more than just kill the children.

“Who’s going to be carrying who?” Conell asked as Samraiche finished up.

“Isilion, will you carry Celso?” Ytanwe asked, and Isilion nodded. “Samraiche or I should carry Gezras.”

None of them missed the way the children tensed at that. Samraiche’s eyes flickered to the side, and he rather deliberately pulled a face. “I think you should probably carry him, Ytanwe,” Samraiche said, leaving unsaid how clearly uncomfortable the children were with a mage, even one with as little power as Ytanwe knew Samraiche to have.

Ealonwe wound up with Conell and Samraiche with Lev, and Ytanwe carefully picked up Gezras. It was amazing how much smaller people looked when they were unconscious. The redhead seemed outright tiny, his breath coming fast and shallow and his body visibly shaking.

 _Keep breathing,_ Ytanwe thought, looking down at the eerily pale child bundled in his arms. This close, he could see the pointed ear tips poking through the shock of red hair, and he had to swallow down the usual outrage at the humans who carelessly or gleefully stomped on the children of the Aen Seidhe. Worse yet was the possibility that the child—that _Gezras_ —would wake still— _rabid_ , still incapable of distinguishing friend from foe. Yntawe had been required to deliver the mercy stroke before, but never like that. Never to someone sound enough in body to live but so far wandering in spirit that they would harm anyone near them.

All he could do was pray to Dana Méadbh that he wouldn’t have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: 
> 
> Gezras undergoes some _desperately unwanted_ restraint in this chapter; I portray the Cats as berserkers, and Gezras has aer first experience with that in this chapter, and is pinned down to keep aerséy from continuing to try and kill everything in reach. Gezras dislocates aer own arm trying to get out of being pinned down, but it’s not mentioned in any detail. The berserker rages themselves are a function of mage experiments with the mutagens.
> 
> Additionally, there’s a mention of euthanization from Ytanwe, an Aen Seidhe guerrilla member (Scoia’tel before the Scoia’tel were a thing). He does not enjoy nor want to do it, especially not to a child, but considers it an occasional necessity in the face of mortal-but-slow-killing wounds. This is in the second to last paragraph in this chapter, the one starting with _Keep breathing._
> 
> There’s some Elder in this chapter! I spent way too much time trying to come up with reasonable workarounds for various words that just never got mentioned for this thing!
> 
> Dana Méadbh is a nature goddess and the only deity that we hear about from the Aen Seidhe.
> 
> “Dana Méadbh, _holl_ weddyn?” ; “[God], _all_ children?”
> 
> “Er _llygad_ ” ; “Their _eyes_ ” 
> 
> “Essear vatt’ghern weddyn” ; “They’re Witcher children”
> 
> “Deithwedd, esseae _aen seidhe_ ” ; “[the redhead (lit. fire-child)], they’re _elven_ ”
> 
> Ebrach is what I decided to call a completely fictional language that was spoken in Ebbing before it was conquered by Nilfgaard.


End file.
